Adding ShipBubbles tutorial
 

In response do Dupxo7's post in TWoS thread, here's a short tutorial for adding air bubbles to sinking ship in SH5.

1) Configuring Goblin - if you have not used it before:

Goblin is included with SH5, and you'll find it in your SH5 folder. There's couple things to do to set it up:
- first, right click the app, acces properties and in Compatibility tab, select "disable visual themes" to prevent menus flickering
- launch Goblin, select Tools > Options and there, enter path to your SH5 folder in "ActorsDirectory" and in "RootFolder" lines.

2) Adding Bubbles:

Lets use T3 Cimmaron Tanker as an example. Its files are stored in folder:

data/Sea/NOL_T3Cimmaron

- open NOL_T03.GR2 file

- select File->Merge and double click NOL_T03.zon file

You should now see Cimmaron Tanker in 3d view window on the right. In left pane (called "GDS Scene Tree"), you see ship's bone structure and in middle pane (called "Project Tree"), its controllers. Look for controller SH3ZonesCtrl@NOL_T3 and click it. This will open damage editor window, and in 3D view you should now see a bunch of white boxes all around the ship.

- in Damage Editor, select "Box". New box will appear, highlighted red. This is you new damage zone.

- Use "Position" menu in damage editor window to move and rescale box to your liking - move it somewhere you would like bubbles to originate from, like large hatch doors or other openings. If you have problems seeing where your box is due to ship's hull obscuring it, you can toggle (under "View" in main window of Goblin) "Toggle Draw Wireframe" to enable a see-through view of the ship.

- After you've positioned your box, in "Zone Type" menu in Damage Editor, find "ShipBubbles" zone type.

- If you want bubbles come from more places, reprat these steps adding new boxes until you're satisfied.

- Close Damage Editor window.

After you've made changes, entire selection of damage controllers under NOL_T3.zon file in Project Tree will be highlighted red. Right click NOL_T3.zon and select "Save File", this will save your changes.

If you relaunch the game and sink Cimmaron Tanker again, it should generate air bubbles when sinking.

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3) Making it in JGSME friendly way: Instead of changing files directly in SH5's data folder, better option is to create a new folder ("Bubbles_Mod" for example), copy all files that you will be changing together with their paths, so if a file is in:

data/Sea/NOL_T3Cimmaron

you should put the copy in:

/TWoS_Parts/Bubbles_Mod/data/Sea/NOL_T3Cimmaron

Then work on these copies instead of files in your data folder. This way, instead of messing with your TWoS installation (which could backfire if you make any mistakes), you are creating a new addon to TWoS which you can then enable/disable at will with JGSME.

Thank you very much :D

Thank you very much for this tutorial :yeah::salute::up:

Many tahnks for this tutorial.:Kaleun_Applaud:

Regards.

Fitzcarraldo :Kaleun_Salute:

Jesus, almost all imported SH3 and SH4 ships don't have ShipBubbles zones. Many default SH5 ships too. That will be looooooong task to set bubbles zones (15 ships done so far).



BTW. This GoblinEditor is piece of crap. Errors and bugs everywhere, everytime, CTDs. God help me please.


Now I admire the enthusiasm and stubbornness of the modders even more.

Weird, I was under impression that imported ships mostly have them... just checked some imported ships at random and all had bubbles. Could you post some imported ship classes that you found lack them?


Heh, wait till you use GR2 Editor (written from scratch (!) by modder TheDarkWraith, it is currently only tool to edit GR2 models in SH5 for people who don't speak binary. While it's an amazing feat by single modder and enabled us to add new ships and planes in GR2 format, it remains quite difficult to use since TDW never finished working on it, and a lot of its features were left incomplete).

EDIT: I don't know how you do it, but as far as Goblin is concerned, I had far less crashes and errors if I launch Goblin first and then open gr2/dat file from within it, then if I try to open gr2 file using "Open with...Goblin Editor" option from context menu.

I had to add ShipBubbles zones to:


NACA
NAMC
NATF
NKEF
NKL
NKLCS_C2SB1
NKLSS_HAKUSIKA
NKLSS_HAKUSIKA2
NKMCS_AKITA
NKMCS_AKITA2
NKMCS_C1B
NKMCS_ZINBU
NKMSS_BIYO
NKMSS_BIYO2
NKMSS_FR3
NKMSS_GRANVILLE
NKMSS_HOGISLAND
NKMSS_WARMELODY
NKMV
NOL_T3CIMMARON
NOM_RANGER
NKPF
NKPMCS_EXPRESS
NKSS_CA2
NKSS_YAE
NLLS
NOL_NIPPON
NOM_PAULA
NOS_HARUNA
NOTMs
NPL_HAP
NPL_HAP2
NPL_kiturin


33 ships.